First Day at Work

So today was my first full day here, and I walked to the office by myself. By "walked to the office," I mean I went on a walking tour of the whole freaking city before finally finding the office. I tell you, when you can't read the street signs and you've only walked the route once backwards (office to apt, not apt to office) and you're fairly hopeless with directions in your own hometown, walking to work is hard! I started by walking down the 7 flights of stairs to the ground and then trying to remember which direction to walk initially. Unlike the U.S., where buildings are set pretty straight with roads and you usually exit a building and then have to make a left or right decision, here there is a small rocky area around part of the building that serves as a parking lot and then an archway that is kind of a drivethrough and streets curving around the building on several sides, so just heading off in the right direction was a challenge for me.

I ended up walking back up the stairs and asking one of the other interns (who speaks fluent Russian and is familar with the area and generally knows everything but is super nice about it) how to get to the next landmark I remembered. So once he pointed me in the right direction, I walked around the building, down the road a little ways, cut behind the white shack with the red roof, over the white paved area, up some stairs, over a bridge above the railroad tracks, down the stairs, across a big open area, through a park, down 8 blocks, and then down another 3. But that's the short version, when you go directly. I added another mile and a half or so. :)

I'm really excited about the work I'll be doing. Today we had a meeting with the 3 summer interns and the people we'll be working with at Mercy Corps. I'll be working with the microfinance team to identify the types of information they should get from customers so as to offer them the best services and plan for the services they should offer in the future. This microfinance team wants to have a really good picture of the economic health of the country and of individual communities, so I will work with the team to identify the types of information that can be compiled to produce that bigger pictures. It sounds really exciting and cool! The people I'm working with are sharp, sharp and very nice to me. I think that I'll get to do good work here and have a good time doing it. Okay, I'm starting to get tired and droopy again. Think I'll sign off and read a while before bed...